This is the Anxiety Bites podcast, and I am your host, Jen Kirkman. While I'm doing another episode of Anxiety Bites, I am your host, Jen Kirkman. Let's talk about the Vegas nerve. Now, I've heard this term, and I can't believe in my billions of years working on my anxiety that no one really ever mentioned it to me. I mean, I guess you don't need to know what it is, but it's pretty fascinating to know that we have this nerve that send signals to almost every part of our body.
And there are ways to stimulate this nerve that don't involve touching it directly. It's not like a muscle that you would get a massage on, but that when this nerve is sort of poop, doubt, it disrupts the signals it's trying to send to certain parts of our body for digestion or for you know, thinking. Clearly, it covers so many different things, and so I guess it's just more knowledge so that when you think about doing a relaxation exercise or doing a meditation, you might think, well,
I don't need to do that. I feel okay mentally, I'm in a good mood. And it's like wessage just about your mood. You know, you want to stimulate your vaguas nerve so that things are running a okay in your body. And it's not something that we have to
like obsess over and worry about. Oh my god, I didn't stimulate my veguas nerve today, But it's just something to be aware of that it kind of contributes to the overall And so there's so much that this nerve does that I actually have two episodes coming out about it. Today I'm talking to Dr Novaz Habib about more physical aspects of the vegas nerve, and he has a book
titled Activate your Vagus Nerve. Unleash your body natural ability to heal, gut sensitivities, inflammation, brain fog, anxiety, autoimmunity, depression. And then next week's episode, I'll be talking to someone about, you know, healing emotional trauma and what emotional trauma does to the vagus nerves. So at the end of this episode, before I get to the takeaways, I will read to you from Dr Habib's book about some of the exercises that you can do, whether it's daily or ones that
are better to do. Just weakly to help activate the vagus nerves. I will give you all of them. You can get the rest in his book, but just to give you an idea. So I'm just going to get right to this episode because this is all kind of newer to me. So let's just let the expert talk about it, and I don't need to keep babbling about the vagus nerve. But yeah, I mean this is almost like, you know, a like the cliff note. It's a version
of what the vagus nerve does. I mean, if you know a lot about it, you're probably going to sit there and be like, oh my god, there's so much more, and it's like I know, I know. Um So anyway, my guest today, Dr Novas Habb is an author. He's also the founder of Health Upgraded, a functional medicine and
health optimization clinic in Toronto, Canada. He works with high performing professionals, athletes, and entrepreneurs to dig a little deeper and find the answers to what's holding back their health again. He's also the author of Activate Your Vegas Nerve and all uh. All links will be in the show notes right here where you can get the book and find out more about dr have and for now, let's find
out more about the Vegas nerve. Well, the vagus nerve, and everyone listening it's not spelled like las Vegas v A g U S. Sure they know because they're reading along. But I had heard of the vagus nerve, and throughout this podcast, smart people I've talked to have casually mentioned it, and I kept thinking, I have to do a Vegas nerve episode. And when I read your book, Activate your Vagus Nerve, unleash your body's natural ability to heal, I
was blown away by everything that our vagus nerve. I'm not sure if controls is the right word, but I will say casually controls or has a hand in. And so let's just start real basic. What is the vagus nerve and what are the main things in the body it controls? Yeah, the book, the book goes into a lot more depth, but we can definitely cover the basics here and so, um, we we have lots of nerves in our body. And the reason I talked about this one is because it's a special nerve. It it really
does a lot more than people realize. It connects to so many different places. That's in fact why they named it. The vagus nerve came from the root word of vague or like I guess it means wandering, meaning that it goes to so many different places. So it's one of twelve pairs of cranial nerves that comes out of the brain stem, which is that little projection just below the brain as we know it where if you've ever watched Um the Water Boy, he talks about the medulla oblong dada.
That's exactly where the vegas nerve actually comes out. Where it comes out. It comes out one on each side. There's four roots and then they come out and they connect and then they actually blend together. The right side and the left side blend together, and it has different branches that go to a bunch of different areas. Like all of the other twelve cranial nerves, primarily they're going to hit areas in the head and face area, so things like I control and facial muscles are controlled through
the cranial nerves. But the vagus nerve does a bit more than that, so it does have a little bit of control in and around the head and neck. It actually sends a branch to the ear for skin sensation. It sends a couple of branches to the throat, to the pharynx, and to the larynx. Those are the muscles at the back of the throat that allow the airway to remain open, and the laryngeal muscles, so it helps to pull and push the the vocal cards. So that in fact, is what gives us pitch and tone in
our voice. So the reason that can go really really low or really really high with my voice is because I have tone or tonally within my vagus nerve sending signals through there to stretch the muscles and pull the vocal chords accordingly. But then it continues down and it actually courses in the neck right beside the carotid artery in the jugular vein, and what makes things I always feel like you don't want to hit those exactly. So it's actually funny enough. It's inside the same sheet that's
inside the same tissue as those two blood vessels. So those are the blood vessels that supply blood to the brain and take blood away from the brain. And so it just goes to show how important this nerve truly is. Because it gets severed or if anything within that sheath gets severed, the function of our body is going to be severely limited. And so as it goes down, it then enters into the thorax, into the chest area, where it innervates the heart to control heart rate and do
a whole bunch of other stuff. It goes to the lungs to monitor the breath rate. Doesn't control it, but it doesn't monitor it, and that's really important. And it talks about inflammation, supports the inflammation response within all of these organs as well. But it doesn't stop there, continues on down with the esophagus and goes through the diaphragm into our abdomen, into our belly, where it then innervates
essentially every single organ within the entire belly. There's no other nerve in the body that does anything like this. It's going to innervate the spleen, the kidneys, the liver, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, you name it. Every organ has some sort of connection to the vegus nerve. And that's what really stuck out to me about the topic about
this nerve. It's always stuck out to me. I'm a chiropractor by profession, and so like nerve a system, brain function has always been a huge piece of my my journey and understanding health, and so this one always stuck out as a really important piece of the puzzle, and so that's why I wanted to share once I learned a bit more about what it does, that it needed to be told to people because there's such an important controlling mechanism here and you were using a word is
it innervate? Is that what you were saying? It means supplyect right, So it means connect to and send signals to. More from I do want to talk about this concept that you do mention in the book that the vagus nerve has a function in which is gut health. But before we even get to that, I just have a really silly question why. I mean, this is just a philosophical question, but why why have this one nerve do so much? Isn't that dangerous? And shouldn't it delegate to
other nerves? Is it? Or is there an advantage to having one nerve do so much? It's a really great question. Um. If I knew the full answer to that, I think it would be on par with whatever ultimate being there is out there. I don't have a full answer to that. Um, we do know that the parasympathetic nervous system, which is kind of what that rest digest recovery system is signaled through the vegas nerve. And yeah, it is a single
point of failure potentially right and certain indices. But I don't think it was built out with the intention of ever having been injured, uh severely right, um And so that's why it's it's encased in a very important sheet. It connects left and right. It has a couple of different kind of backup plans. Essentially it can go up through either side and connect to the same area and
send signals accordingly. Um So, so there is a bit of a backup plan built into it, but it just it's more of a therm stat type of function than it is a signaling out from the brain function. And so it's not as worries some if anything does happen that said trauma and injury to the nerve would creative does create significant challenges to a lot of people. I want to address this because the words gut health and mind body connection and inflammation are very popular in our culture.
I think a lot of people take those terms and run with it in ways that I think are damaging. So let's demystify these things, because your book goes so well into explaining and honestly, it's like taking a college course in you know, biology, but you say in this bum to read your book to you. One of the most likely low grade stressors that you may not be aware of is the bacteria living in and around you.
The population of bacteria living in your gut and on your skin has a significant effect on us, and if that population is optimally balanced, it can be a major stressor on your body. So so let's start there. What what does that mean? What is gut health? How does it relate to being a stress around the body, which I assume would come up in the form of stress, anxiety,
even pain. Yeah. Absolutely. Um. The best way to kind of simplify this and understand it within context is that we have between forty and sixty trillion human cells in our body, and these forty six trillion human cells can't function on their own in the environment that we are in. They require support from some external ah cells and organisms, and these are things that we generally can't see, and those are the bacteria, parasites, viruses, east horns that are
all around us. With the majority of these other organisms. We have a sim biotic relationship, meaning that we work really well with them, and they work really well with us. Our body provides them with nutrients that they need, they assimilate and provide us nutrients that we need, and over the millennia of our revolution, we have evolved to have this very positive relationship with the vast majority of these
microbiome supporting a microbiome producing populations. So I said, we have between fourty and sixty trillion human cells in our body. Just in our large intestine alone, we have over a hundred trillion bacteria HM. So that population is really quite important.
And I know it sounds a little hokey when we talk about gut help when we talk about microbiome, but the scientists finally starting to catch up and it's actually starting to identify exactly where these challenges can come from and what this disbiosis meaning imbalance within the gut can lead to. Okay, I having instituted testing in my own practice, so I actually help people identify where the challenges are
coming from. Adam microbiome level using stool testing, using DNA based stool testing to identify exactly what types of bacteria are around. Yeah, you know, I talk a lot about on this podcast about the concept of chemical imbalance when it comes to treating anxiety depression with medication. There's just no test, you know, and something like this we hear gut health. I'm glad to hear that there is actually
a way to find out what's in there, what's imbalanced. Yeah, so this is what what I kind of practice in my own life and my own journey. I found functional medicine which really helped me to support my own health. I used to way to enter fifty pounds, high blood pressure, borderline diabetes in my twenties and just was dealing with significant health challenges. Energy was always low, and when I was introduced to this it was a bit of a shock to my system. I was going through chiropractic college.
I thought I knew everything about health. I'm gonna be able to share this with so many people, but I wasn't implementing it myself. And then when functional medicine came around, it really helped open my eyes too beyond what we tend to kind of see in the conventional system. And the testing was key to this. When we understand biochemically what's truly going on within our body when we have UH, the step by step process is shown to us based on the actual testing that we see through gut testing,
through urinary organic acid testing, through hormone testing. These can help us to really pick out the specific areas where we as an individual or having issues. And then this is where we can kind of marry new world scientific insights and tools that we have through testing with old world wisdom that's been there through traditional Chinese medicine, ire vetic medicine, Mediterranean medicine, and has truly slowly transformed into
kind of this natural alternative care type of idea. Even though it's not truly alternative, it's something that's been there for much longer than the conventional system that we're in. Right, it's an alternative to the newer thing we made up exactly exactly. So, I've worked with many people that are dealing with mental health struggles, a lot of people with autoimmune conditions, a lot of people with these underlying root causes.
And when we identify what that root causes, and it's often about the time I can identify that microbiome imbalance, that disbiosis that's going on within the gut, that's affecting the gut health, and so we actually have scientific like proof of why the problem is occurring, why we're leading down this path of inflammatory reactions within the gut that's
leading elsewhere. We also, just as a side note, seventy percent of our immune cells by volume are located in the lining of the gut, and so this is where inflammation will often come up. We have this protective mechanism because we know that not all good things are in the gut. It's not all good bacteria, um parasites, worms, candid to all these things do pop up, and so
we need to protect ourselves from it. And if we're not providing the right tools for the immune system to be able to handle those threats, that's where the problems tend to occur. Um That comes down to diet, that comes down to breathing, That comes down to vagus nerve activity, because the vagus nervous supplying information to that area, to the gut lining, to the inflammatory cells that in fact controls an entire system called the coolinergic anti inflammatory system
literally is controlled through the vagus nerve. If that signaling isn't present, then we can't put the brakes on an accelerator basically, So what I like to say is our our bodies aren't like a car, and the accelerator is like the sympathetic nervous system where we go in to fight or flight. We're in go mode. But when we get to a red lighter, when we get to a yellow light, we need to slow down. We need to be able to shut off or decrease the speed by
which we're going. If we can't do that, we're gonna cause major issues. Right we're going to go through a red light, We're gonna hurt somebody potentially. And so the brakes are the parasympathetic nervous system. The vaguest nerve is the brakes to the entire system. We'll be right back, Okay, So the vagus nerve monitors what's going on in the gut and and again at the end of the episode
will get more solution based. But so there's a world where not just through diet, which I know does affect the vaguest nerve, but certain exercises we can do, whether it's acupuncture or massage or changing our sleep that can change how the vagus nerve monitors the gut and somehow help heal or am I kind of relating that in a way that's not correct. Oftentimes, what exacerbates the issues that we are experiencing is the fact that the vegas
nerve is under too much pressure. So when we if we go back to the brakes a little bit, as a very simple example, brake pads wear out the same way the vegas nerve can get overworked. If we're constantly providing inflammatory um challenges to the body, the brakes are gonna wear out. The vegas nerve can't handle a ton of constant chronic inflammatory issues that are constantly coming up, and so slowly and surely the vegas tone is going
to decrease. The ability for our vegas nerve to send these signals on a regular basis is going to come down. And so what we need to do is to do the exercises, do the tools, and provide the vagus nerve and opportunity to do the work that it needs to do without providing more chronic inflammatory reactions on a regular basis.
So this is what they do. Um when when we do the deep breathing exercise, when we do the meditation, when we do the the good gut health cleanses and the detoxes, if that's the plan that you want to go down. Um, what we're essentially doing is we're decreasing the inflammatory triggers and we're giving the body a chance to heal itself. The body truly does know how to heal itself, but we have to give it the right environment, the right tools, the right inputs to be able to
do so. And so that's where the exercises will help to provide that initial step. And for some people we might need to go a step further where we actually change the microbiome using probiotics, where we actually address specific, potentially genetic, some somewhat functional imbalances with certain supplements or certain ingredients that need to be included within their diet. And that's where we can work on the optimization side of things, where we can actually help the body to
function at a slightly better level. It's almost like a bio hacking type of idea, but in a very clinical and very test based sense, so we know exactly what we're trying to accomplish. And that's why the vast majority of people that work with a properly trained functional medicine practitioner somebody that understands the function of the body really well, often have really good results. When I think about inflammation, I often say, if I'm feeling off, I don't know
how to allow us to put it. I might say, I feel like there's inflammation somewhere. I don't know what I'm talking about, but it's just become a new word in my life. And what exactly is inflammation? I mean, I assume something is literally inflamed or uh. And then so how does it happen? How do we bring it down? And kind of demystified this other buzzword I hear a lot totally. So inflammation is our body's response to trauma and stress within different ways. And there's there's four different
types of stressors that can trigger inflammatory responses. Emotional stress is one. We can have this brain inflammation that pops up that leads to brain fogginess and ability to think clearly, memory challenges. And this can happen because we're dealing with relationship stress or financial stress on a day to day basis, kids, etcetera. And really rough nite with my kids last night, so I can um. So, emotional stress is one, Psychological stress is another one. And you may say, well, what's the
difference between emotional and psychological. Psychological is more kind of past related. What are the challenges that we experienced potentially as a child, potentially as we were growing up that created the scratches on the lens through which we see the world. Right, So I only see the world in this way because I was affected in a negative way in the past. Right, What are those emotional attachments that we have that have created that that scuff on the lens? Okay,
so a little bit different. We always want to look at the timeline when we're looking at a certain case, when somebody's experienced potentially trauma or something they were younger, and then we have physical stress. These are the things that we think of when we think of inflammation. More commonly, we're thinking about car accident and we've hurt ourselves whiplash, etcetera. And now we have to send all of these cells to this area to help repair the damage. And that's
what inflammation is. Initially in the acute sense, inflammation is sending these cells to an area that's damage to help support repair of it. Inflammation is a good thing in an acute scenario. When that inflammation can't be controlled is when it becomes a bad thing. And so the physical sense is like, let's think of a bruise on our arm. We get this big swelling, we get that inflammatory warm response. That's because the blood flow is going to that area
to help to repair that damage. So that's a really simple way to think about it. But physical uh, stress will create that. And then the last one is biochemical stress, and this is generally the stuff that we don't see until it's maybe a little bit late. This is where food sensitivities can come in for a lot of people that are dealing with specific sensitivities too. For some people, gluten for some people, dairy for some people, um, nightshade,
vegetables can do it, for some people, meat can do it. Right, Like, different people have different triggers that can create this biochemical response, So for some people it's a food based thing, but for a lot of other people. We have to add it to this entire realm of toxic ingredients that are around us, right, the pesticides that are sprayed on our foods, the inorganic laundry detergent that we use, or the chemicals that are on receipt paper when we get our receipt
from Costco or from wherever we're shopping. As we walk out, we're holding this receipt paper which is sending bisphenol a b p A into our bloodstream. The longer you hold that, by the way, the more you're gonna absorb. So do your best to just toss your receipt onto the carpeople as much as you can. Yes, the CBS receipts are
killing us, that's exactly right. So we want to be really careful about this toxic burden because that excess toxin load that our body then has to handle will only add to the inflammatory response that our body is going to create. We have a lot that we have to deal with. Our liver is detoxifying constantly, and if our body doesn't have the capacity to handle it, then as a toxic burden goes up, that biochemical stress increases, our inflammatory response gets hindered more and more. And so the
response is what's mediated through the vagus nerve. How do we help to limit how much inflammation is occurring. Inflammation is good, like I said, in an acute scenario, it helps to repair tissue. It sends the cells to the area that are going to help repair the white blood cells the fibroblasts. They don't need to get into the specifics, but it's gonna send the specific cells to that area
through the blood to repair damage. If that does not get controlled, then our immune response and our inflammatory response is uncontrolled, and that's where the problem will occur when we have chronic inflammation. Chronic uncontrolled inflammation is essentially we're stepping on the accelerator and not allowing the brakes to do their job, not allowing the brakes to slow it down and to limit inflammation. The way inflammation occurs within the body is a traumatic incident of some sort occurs,
we send cells to the area. There's a ton of chemical reactions. Don't need to get into the specifics, but that's going to send more and more cells to the area to repair. If it happens in certain areas like joints, we're gonna get things like rheumatoid ar thornies. If it happens in the thyroid, we're gonna get hashimotos there. If it happens in the brain, we could get things like MS or brain fog or significant challenges that occur long term.
We need to control the inflammation, and that signal is sent through the vagus nerve via that col allergic anti inflammatory system which is mediated there, so where the vaggest nerves the brakes to help control what that inflammation is going to do. So if I a person who is suspect that maybe I have some inflammation in my body, I am feeling whatever that feels like because of the
vagus nerve. Is that correct it. When the vagus nerve identifies that there are inflammatory signals around our body, it can signal upwards via signals that go from the body to the brain through the vagus nerve. Yes, but it's not the same as like when you feel somebody touching your hand. Those are going through scaltal nerves that those are the nerves that go via our spinal cord. So there's different nerves that will have different functions. We can't
truly feel through our vagus nerve. It's not feeling from like a sense perspective. It's more of autonomic monitoring. So think of it more like the thermostatic of our of our body. Anxiety bites will be right back after a quick little message from one of our sponsors. You mentioned that acute inflammation is part of how the body heals and a really good example of something on your arms swelling. We're going to have a little lump there for a while.
But when something is chronically inflamed, that's when it's moved into a disordered area. And that is again another through line that happens throughout this podcast. Is the same for anxiety. You know, we need our acute moments of anxiety so that we don't get hit by a car or we know to respond to something, and then it's disordered when we feel that way all of the time. If I'm experiencing brain fogged because of inflammation in my brain, is
my brain literally swollen. I'll give you an example. My dad um ten years ago. He's fine now, thank god, but fell down, hit his head and had a subdural hematomy and his brain a swelling. Because I'm not telling you this, but you know, to the listeners and correct me if I'm wrong. But the there was blood starting to pool and his brain was swelling and moving away from it so you know, to protect itself. And then of course that caused him not to be able to speak.
He was making no sense. He had to have a surgery to drain the blood. Now obviously that's not what my brain is doing when I'm having brain fog, But is it not to a small extent that's exactly right, to a very very small extent, not to the point where it's actually going to trigger a pressure increase within the cranial cavity like it does in the case of
your father's with subderal hematoma. So with an acute physical trauma where you hit your head, whether it's a traumatic brain injury of some sort, whether it's a whiplash style or concussion style injury, those are physical reasons for inflammation to occur within the brain, uh in and around the brain, And subderal means just below in the ninjis, so it's in the casing around the brain. When that happens, when there's bone that's kind of blocking it, then we actually
have this swelling that's physically pushing on the brain. Right. So this is like it's going to affect a specific area. Say, for example, in your dad's case, it was affecting his speech area, as inability to speak came from physically having pressure on that area. When it comes to something like a biochemical respond to biochemical inflammation, we're looking at just activation of some of the cells within the brain and the nervous system itself, and these are called glial cells
and astro sites. These cells make up they're they're called glial cells because they were initially thought to be the glue, but they're really the immune cells within the brain. And so what they do is they are the ones that are constantly making sure that there isn't any damage occurring within the brain. They're proning nerve endings, They're making sure that the nerves are are functioning at the best possible leve.
But when they become hyperactivated because we're under some sort of stress, some sort of inflammatory response, usually within our gut, and we can get into that, it's going to trigger it's going to trigger the glial cells to do too much, and so they will actually shut down more neurons than they need to, and that actually slows processing speed within our brain. Oh that is so well explained. Okay, So we've got these little glial cells and they're doing their
thing and they're making everything nice. So I'm experiencing stress brain fog, and now it's saying, oh boy, she she can't handle all this. Let me shut down some neurons. And that's like the last thing I need. And so now I'm having trouble maybe with memory or I'm just feeling a little bit unable to perform my tasks or my job at the level I'm used to brain fog, and that is coming from some kind of stress either in my body or emotional stress exactly right all together.
So now tell me about that connection with the gut. Yeah, so this is the best part where we actually get into that gut brain access gut brain connection. When we
are a fetus, we develop out if things called so mights. Okay, so we've got literally these chunks of cells that are stem cells that progenerate into different types of tissues, and the same so might that develops into our blood brain barrier, literally the brain barrier that controls what blood can send into the brain and what can come out, also develops the exact same thing in the gut, and that is the gut lining that essentially is what protecting our body,
our human cells from what's living within the tube of our intestines and our stomach and etcetera. And so the lining of the gut and the lining of the blood brain barrier come from the same things, meaning that if we have some sort of reaction to microbiome imbalance. We have some sort of food sensitivity that causes a leakiness with the our gut, a breakdown of that lining within
the gut. It will eventually create a breakdown of the lining within the brain, and so that leads to inflammation that can get into the brain, creating that glial cell activation, creating brain fog, creating those challenges internally at a very low microscopic level, but it does occur, and this is something that's been proven time and time again in the science. More recently then, I think, is serotonin produced in a
large intestine as well. Right of the serotonin within our body is located within the gut and the gut lining. So generally with the medication side of things, you're looking at an SSRI I a selective serotonin a re uptake inhibitor, meaning that the serotonin that gets released into the synapse where the actual occurrence of these narrow transmitters occurs, where the chemical reaction is that the serotonin is sent out into the synapse and the post synaptic membrane essentially where
the signal is sent to. What we're trying to do is keep more of the serotonin in the synapse. We're not trying to reuptake or bring that serotonin back into the neural and so the inhibitors will create a state of more serotonin present within the synapse, within that gap area. Oftentimes it's occurring because in certain cases there's a genetic predisposition to not being able to produce serotonin, and in some cases it's because you have a methylation issue that
you're not able to break that serotonin down effectively. And so there is a very common, very very real connection between taking anti anxiety, anti depressive medications and the effect that it than has in the gut, because it's affecting that ninety four percent of serotonin located within the gut.
Lining and talk to me about IBS and the vagat nerve and mental health, because I always feel like a few people have mentioned on this show that they themselves had ibas and it was a direct line with panic attacks. And and again, this is one of those things where we're not saying it's in your head, you don't have IBS, and we're not saying, oh, it's your fault, you have it. You need to you know, um meditate twice a day and it'll go away. But but what is the connection there?
There is a middle point there for sure, and so that is linked to that serotonin that's located in the gut. Lining Just from from kind of a personal thing, I really dislike the diagnosis irritable bowel syndr ome. Literally they're telling you that your bowel is irritable, and you're the one that told them that your bottler is are irritable. Whether it's conservation diarrhea, some sort of trigger um, so they're just turning words to say that it's something called
IBS that said what's causing that? Right? Like? Why why is there an imbalance? And that comes down to two different things. Either you're not getting great signaling from your brain through your vegas nerve to those intestines where they can actually then go and do their job. Or second, there's a microbiome inbalance that's triggering it. And so no meditation twice a day is not going to solve it, right,
it's not going to affect it that well. We need to be able to identify why is it a combination of those two and in what state and what sense is it a combination of those two. That's where the
testing really comes in handy. So when we have dysbiosis, when we have a bacterial in balance, what's essentially happening is that relationship between our bacteria and our human cells is not as symbiotic as we want it to be, and that creates leakiness, and that creates those micro inflammation things in that se of immune cells located in the gut lining, the vagus nerve is going to signal to
the intestines to keep food moving along peristalsis. And if we don't have that signal occurring, then we have stagnation.
We have things that either slow it down or speed it up way too much, and that can lead to diarrhea or constipation, and in some cases both either you're completely on one side or you're completely on the other, or you flip back and forth, and so it's it's generally a vagus nerve signal that not strong because you're under it some sort of excessive stress that's burnt down the brakes and there's some sort of biochemical imbalance that's occurring.
So it's a chicken in the eggs scenario. It can be vagus nerve only, it can be dis biosis only by the when it's combined, that's when we really get this diagnosis of IBS. And then because it's so heavily linked to the serotonin levels and so heavily linked to neurotransmitters and the entire nervous system, there's a heavy linked between anxiety, depression and got health issues like IBS. So that makes sense because the vegas nerve has so many
things to monitor. If it's busy monitoring my suritable bowels, as you say, it's not really what it is, but which I appreciate it. I totally get that. Um I hate the way some things are named. It makes me crazy if I'm doing things, and we'll get to it to activate my vagus nerve if I am meditating and
do breathing. One thing that's helping is that it's decreasing some of the stress on the vagus nerves, so that in a way philosophically, it should be helping two distress that vagus nerves that has those worn outbreaks so that it can do its jobs. But we still have to attend to the actual body part that it's affecting. But if you are only attending to your IBS and you're stressing about it, you know, maybe give yourself a little bit of a leg up by trying to reduce the
stress around your chronic illness. That's exactly right. It's counterintuitive to be stressed out about something while trying to fix it. Again, I think with the casual way that people throw around things like mind body connection, I think when people are in that really sensitive state of stress around something physical, it really sounds like someone is saying it's all in your head, or the only way to solve it is in your head. And and so I'm glad we just
broke it down. So a couple other things in your book that we're very interesting to me was the vegas nerve and its effect on heart rate, breathing, vocal cords even but there was one I just want to clear this one up because you talk about someone having a dysfunctional heart rate and someone who may faint, and you say that you know, at that point the autonomic system is unable to regulate the heart and blood vessels. Could be genetic, could be some kind of outside trauma, like
you know, a pregnancy or something. But so there are there people that they don't just have what we have, which is occasionally the vagus nerve has some worn down brake pads, but they have a chronic thing that is vegas nerves specific. Yeah, I wouldn't go as Yeah, I think when you get into something like vasil vagel sync could be where there's ing, where there's actual like pots.
For example, when you get up from a standing or from a laying position into a standing position and you have an immediate hypotension, meaning your blood pressure drops significantly. Because it's monitored through the vegas nerves, the vagus nerve can't signal that information up. Then often people will have balance issues, falling, fainting, etcetera. Um, I think it's just that's that's when there's actual physical breakdown of the vegas
nerve function. So it's a the brakes are borne down even further but in a different area, so it's more heart focused, more lung focused, rather than it being gut focused. And so those people may and again it may be genetic like there's nothing they can't do about it. I wouldn't No, I would say that there is absolutely something they can do about it, but sometimes the therapy needs to be a bit more aggressive. It's probably the best way to put that. Whether it's like a a stib
other type of therapy. Whether there's something else from like a functional neurological perspective that can be addressed to help rebuild the brake pads in the other areas, we we can go and do that. Genetically, there are some predisposition, but genetics never pulls the trigger. Genetics only loads the gun, right, And so I hear it way too often that, well, my family had this, so I'm going to have it. I have family history of this, so I'm yeah, you
might be at a higher risk. Genetics really only plays about a thirty role in the production of an issue in the next generation. It's it's that's something that's been proven over and over again. Now, but um, about of what you are actually experiencing is because of your environment and because of the stressors and how you respond to
those stressors emotional, psychological, biochemical, and physical. So that's what I would say would probably be the best way to explain, like how to distinguish between genetics and environment is if you know what genetics are saying, then you can make your environment do what it needs to do to support it. We'll continue the interview on the flip side of a
quick message from our sponsors. Lastly, Okay, so you talk about in your book breathing incorrectly, which again is you know, nobody wants to hear this out there in the anxiety world. We want a quicker fix. But most of us can be just breathing incorrectly, not even in a moment of panic, just the way we exist every minute of the day. What I'm assuming we're hyperventilating ourselves by taking short, quick breaths, is that is that what you mean by breathing incorrectly
in your to some extent, Yeah, exactly. If you watch a newborn baby breathe, just have them laid down. Like next time you're around somebody with a young baby, just watch what they're doing when they're laying down, especially, watch what the breathing pattern is. Check to see if their lungs are expanding at their chest level or if it's their belly that's going up and down. I guarantee you you will see it. It's their belly. Their belly is rising and falling ever so slightly enough. But that's a
sign that we should be breathing in that pattern. Now of people breathe incorrectly often times that's something that we've learned to do. Okay, So I see it in my kids. I have a five year old daughter, I have a one year old daughter. I get anxious because of it a lot myself, but I see, even with my five year old that her breathing patterns have shifted into becoming a lot more chest based when we breathe with just
our chest muscles. And so i'll act. For example, I'll get her to take a deep breath when she's getting stressed out, when she gets riled up, she's at a theme park or doesn't want to eat the food. She gets into this hyper mentality state and she's just using her upper back muscles for her accessory breathing muscles around her lungs, and she's sucking in her belly when she's trying to take in that deep breath. It's exactly paradoxical
to what we should be doing. If you watch the baby, right, the baby in their non stressed state is going to be breathing with their belly. When we get into this paradoxical breathing where we're actually sucking our diaphragm up, and that's creating um, not a great vacuum. By which we then can suck in air. It's a not allowing the diaphragm to do the job that it needs to do. The diaphragm is the primary breathing muscle, and so we need to be breathing through a diaphragm first, no question
about it. That's the biggest thing that most people, both within the anxiety world and well outside the anxiety of world, I should I assure you vast majority of breathing incorrectly. It's not you, it's what we've been taught. We've been taught that big bellies are bad. We've been taught that the when we're stressed, we have to kind of get into the state. And it's a subconscious thing. It's not something that we've been aware of. And so what we need to do is retrain ourselves to get into the
state that Okay, we're in an anxious state. Close your eyes for a second, and I'm sure you've heard this a billion times, but take a deep breath? Right? What does that mean when you say take a deep breath? Often times we're gonna go and we're gonna take that deep breath in our chest and we're not doing it correctly. We need to breathe with our belly. So simple exercise
for everybody to do. If you put your one hand on your chest, one hand on your belly, and I ask you to take a deep breath, but I want you to keep an eye on is which hand is moving when you take that deep breath in, And the answer should always be the hand that's on your belly. It should expand as you breathe in, and it should retract and go back in as you breathe out. What that means is you're using your diet fram and so
if you can think of it this way. Even with my five year old, I do this, so it tends to work most of the time. I tell her we have two balloons. We have a balloon in our chest and we have a balloon in our belly. And when she's stressed out, I asked her and I put my hands on her belly. I get her to lie down. If it can sure go with it, and I'll say, I want you to blow up this balloon over here, and I have to touch it so that she feels
this is where I wanted to come. And so when she takes that deep breath in the first few times it's going to be a chest breath, and I say no, over here, we need to do it on your belly. And so we eventually, after three or four or five breaths, will see all of a sudden, the breath is shifting into the belly and we're expending that balloon. So I want everybody as a very simple visualization, as a really easy tool. We don't want to inflate this balloon. We
want to inflate the balloon below. What it's going to do is it's going to create a vacuum within our diaphragm and we're actually gonna inflate the lungs. Further. What that's going to do is when the diaphragm is going up and down the way it should be, that is actually creating this signal in the vagus nerve. It's actually physically prodding the vagus nerve to say, we are in a calm state, and now you can turn on Now
you can do your rest digestive recover work. You can turn on the digestive system again, you can turn on the anti inflammatory system again. The breath truly is the answer to this. What we want to do is allow us to shift into this parasympathetic belly breathing state and train our bodies to be able to do so. And that's how the breathing pattern is going to positively affect
your vagus nerve activation in which state you're in. You know, in the first ten years of my anxiety recovery, everyone told me to take deep breaths, and most people did not explain to me how to do it. And I finally learned. But for me, uh, that created an extra anxiety for me in that I didn't trust it. You know, you get obsessed with feeling the air in your lungs almost and think the only way to do it is
to do it. I just did go and I lift up my shoulders, and it took a while for me to be able to transition from not being so obsessed with feeling that completion um which you still can get from diaforgmatic breathing. But I would have to calm down first some other way, and then I would be able to do diaphorgumatic breathing because I was. I don't know, I just trained myself wrong for for so many years. What I love about your book and I'll leave everyone with this to get it on their own. So few
books do this. They'll say, oh, do this exercise you really spell it out at the end chapter. Here, you've got weekly practices for activating the vegas nerve. You tell people how many times a week they should do it. Monthly practices, and you know when you talk about social interactions one to two times weekly, listening to music, meditation,
and mindfulness practice three to seven times weekly. I mean, these are things that you can incorporate into what you're already doing, you know, right before you go to bed or something like that. And now that we know how much the vagus nerve controls and all the stress that it has, I'm hoping that people understand how important it is to do these things, not just when we're feeling stressed, was my point exactly. Yeah, it's something that needs to be practiced and and built out as like a day
to day practice. So even if you go back one page, there's even the daily practices there as well, which talks about gargling and humming and gag reflex activation if you want to go that far, Like there's there's quite a few things that we can do that we can simply tie to, like brushing our teeth, for example, when brush your teeth, then gargle. Here's a great like thirty second
add onto what you're already doing. If we can piggyback a lot of these newer habits onto older habits, make it an easy thing that it becomes a practice that we can do on a regular basis. And this is where the compound effect really truly comes into play within our body. If we can be consistent and regular with
these things, you can create really positive changes. All right, And as almost I have some exercises for you, dr have you when I were talking a little bit off Mike after rerecorded, and he said that something he's training himself to do is to turn the shower on extremely
cold at the end of the shower. And you know how if you do that, you normally tense up, and so he's relaxing and doing you know, calm breathing exercises during that, because bursts of cold like that and staying calm through it are really good for the vegas nerve.
You know, I wish I could do that. I can't believe, you know, Usually there's nothing I within reason won't try, and I think it's within reason, but I can't bring myself to do it, but that's something you could try if you aren't terrified of things that are freezing on your skin. There are some daily practices you can do to activate the vegas nerve that you might be doing already. But gargling. Um. You can gargle twice a day when you brush your teeth in the morning and at night. Humming.
You can hum on your daily commute to bookend your day. Practice humming deep in your throat and your day with a cold shower. Start with um, you know, just thirty seconds, and as it becomes easier, increase the time by thirty seconds to sixty seconds every three days, until maybe even your entire shower is taken under cold water. Something you can do daily is practice three to five minutes of deep breathing in a quiet space before each meal. This
will help you calm down and improve your digestion. Sunlight exposure. Go out and expose your skin to the sun within thirty minutes of sunrise in the middle of the day and within thirty minutes of sunset for at least a minimum of five minutes. And you can put a pillow between your knees to keep you firmly sleeping on your side each night. Those are daily practices that you can do to activate the vagus nerve, and if you have time during the week, yoga pilates are light exercise, any
kind of abbit of movement. Sweating is important. Social interaction, maybe don't sweat um and then go meet your friends, take one of those cold showers in between. Make a point to meet with friends or family in person at least once a week. Laugh as much as you can. Listen to music at least a few times a week. Do grocery shopping, do cleaning one to two times weekly, and a meditation and mindfulness practice five to ten minutes a day at least three times a week and monthly.
Check into massage therapy, chiropractic care, acupuncture treatment are all great for stimulating the vegas nerve. So let's get into the specific takeaways from this episode. So the Vegas nerve v A g U S connect to so many different places. It was named Vegas as it comes from the root word vague, meaning wandering. The Vegas nerve comes out of the Medulla Oblanca. It has different branches that go to a bunch of different areas. Like all of the other
twelve cranial nerves. They hit areas in the head and the face. It sends a bunch to the ear for skin sensation. It sends branches to the throat, the parynx and the larynx. Those are the muscles at the back of the throat that allow the airway to remain open. It helps to push and pull the vocal cord, and so the vagus nerve is what gives us the pitch and the tone in our voice. The nerve continues down and choruses in the neck beside the carotid artery and
the jugular vein. It also innervates the heart to control the heart rate. It goes to the lungs to monitor the breath rate. It supports the inflammation response in all of these organs, and it continues on down with the esophagus and through the diaphragm into our abdomen, and it innervates essentially every single organ in the entire stomach, the spleen, the kidneys that liver, the small intestine, in the large intestine, and innervate means to supply an organ or a body
part with nerves. There is no other nerve even the body that does anything like the vagus nerve. The vegas nerve is very important. If it gets severed, the function of our body is going to be severely limited. It's not worrisome if anything happens to the nerve, but trauma or injury to it would create significant challenges to people. The parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest
is signaled through the vegas nerve. The vegas nerve can be thought of as having more of a thermostat type function than a signaling out from the brain function. According to Dr Habib's book, quote, one of the most likely low grade stressors that you may not be aware of is the bacteria lining um and living in and around you. The population of bacteria living in your gut and on your skin has a significant effect on us, and if that population isn't optimally balanced, it can be a major
stressor on your body. End quote. The science of gut health is that if there is um I'm going to mess up this word again, microbiome imbalance dys biosis is going on within the gut and that effects gut health and causes an inflammatory reaction which can affect autoimmune conditions and mental health. Not all bacteria and parasites in our gut are good, and we need to protect ourselves from it and give our immune system the right tools to handle the threats. And that comes down to diet and
even breathing. And that's due to the vagus nerve activity because the vagus nerve is supplying information to the gut, lining the inflammatory cells that control an anti inflammatory system, and the gut is controlled through the vagus nerve. What can exacerbate issues is that the vagus nerve is under too much pressure. In the same way that our car brake pads wear out, the vagus nerve can get overworked. If we're constantly providing inflammatory challenges to the body, the
brakes are going to wear out. The vagus nerve can't handle a ton of constant chronic lammatory issues that are constantly coming up, and over time, the tone is going to decrease. The ability for the nerve to send signals on a regular basis is going to lessen. We need to do the exercises that provide the vaguest nerve and opportunity to do the work that it needs to do without providing more chronic inflammatory reactions on a regular basis.
When we do deep breathing or meditation or gut health detoxes, what we're doing is decreasing the inflammatory triggers and giving the body a chance to heal itself. Inflammation is our body's response to trauma and stress in different ways. There are four different types of stressors that can trigger inflammatory responses. Emotional stress that can lead to brain fog and inability
to think clearly and memory challenges. Psychological stress different than emotional stress because psychological is related more to the past, the challenges we experienced as children that color the way we see the world today. Physical stress. This could be something literal like a car accident cause whip flash, but basically acute inflammatory is necessary, but it means that cells are being repaired, but any extra inflammatory action is going
to cause physical stress. Biochemical stress. This can be food sensitivities, whether you're allergic to gluten or dairy, or pesticides that are sprayed on foods and organic laundry detergent, et cetera. Most people don't breathe correctly. If you observe a newborn baby breathing, their belly is rising and falling naturally. Adults breathing correctly, and they use their upper back muscles and
accessory breathing muscles, which causes a hyperventilated state. The diaphragm is the primary breathing muscle and so we need to be breathing through our diaphragm first. That's it. That's all I've got for you today, and I once again thank you for tuning into Anxiety Bites. You can send an
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